Overview

Until the 1930s no woman could perform in public and retain respectability in India. Professional female performers were courtesans and dancing girls who lived beyond the confines of marriage, but were often powerful figures in social and cultural life. Women's roles were often also taken by boys and men, some of whom were simply female impersonators, others transgender. Since the late nineteenth century the status, livelihood and identity of these performers have all diminished, with the result that many of them have become involved in sexual transactions and sexualised performances. Meanwhile, upper-class, upper-caste women have taken control of the classical performing arts and also entered the film industry, while a Bollywood dance and fitness craze has recently swept middle class India. In her historical on-the-ground study, Anna Morcom investigates the emergence of illicit worlds of dance in the shadow of India's official performing arts. She explores over a century of marginalisation of courtesans, dancing girls, bar girls and transgender performers, and de- scribes their lives as they struggle with stigmatisation, derision and loss of livelihood.

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9781849042796

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Reviews

'Anna Morcom's extraordinarily compelling book represents one of the most significant interventions in the study of dance in contemporary South Asia. Masterfully bridging discourses on class, gender, globalization, economics, morality, and aesthetics, it effectively foregrounds the forms of inequality and power at work in the production, consumption, and politicization of dance in today's India.' - Davesh Soneji, McGill University, author of Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India 'This is a remarkable book, of great originality, rigour, and importance in the study of modern Indian popular culture. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, and astute interpretation, Morcom presents a rich exploration of the contradictory effects of modernity, nationalism, and bourgeois values on a diverse range of Indian dance traditions, old and new.' - Peter Manuel, Professor, Graduate Center of the City University of New York 'A hugely valuable addition to the literature on the performing arts in India, focusing as it does on communities of highly marginalized dancers who have received scant academic attention. Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance deals with a wide-ranging set of dance sectors including female hereditary performers, bar dancers, transgender erotic performers and kothi dancers, interpreting the author's rich ethnographic detail through a variety of theoretical lenses. On all counts, a very welcome and timely scholarly contribution.' - Prabha Kotiswaran, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law, King's College London, and author of Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India

'Anna Morcom should have our thanks for introducing us to a neglected, buried, and forgotten landscape of dance and dancers of the Hindi belt - As the title of the book tells us, it is the hidden and disesteemed locus of performance that is scrutinised, but it goes beyond that to formulate an argument propagating the hereditary legitimacy of a culture through the voices of a section of performers today' - Radhika Dontala, Fountain Ink magazine 'Anna Morcom's extraordinarily compelling book represents one of the most significant interventions in the study of dance in contemporary South Asia. Masterfully bridging discourses on class, gender, globalization, economics, morality, and aesthetics, it effectively foregrounds the forms of inequality and power at work in the production, consumption, and politicization of dance in today's India.' - Davesh Soneji, McGill University, author of Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India 'This is a remarkable book, of great originality, rigour, and importance in the study of modern Indian popular culture. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, and astute interpretation, Morcom presents a rich exploration of the contradictory effects of modernity, nationalism, and bourgeois values on a diverse range of Indian dance traditions, old and new.' - Peter Manuel, Professor, Graduate Center of the City University of New York 'A hugely valuable addition to the literature on the performing arts in India, focusing as it does on communities of highly marginalized dancers who have received scant academic attention. Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance deals with a wide-ranging set of dance sectors including female hereditary performers, bar dancers, transgender erotic performers and kothi dancers, interpreting the author's rich ethnographic detail through a variety of theoretical lenses. On all counts, a very welcome and timely scholarly contribution.' - Prabha Kotiswaran, Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law, King's College London, and author of Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India

Author Information

Anna Morcom works on music and dance in India and Tibet from a number of perspectives pertaining to modernity and the contemporary world. Her publications include Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema and Unity and Discord: Music and Politics in Contemporary Tibet. She is a lecturer in the Music Department at Royal Holloway, University of London.

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